Weighbridge tickets: what to record on every load

A weighbridge ticket is the record of one weighing: which vehicle, when, gross weight, tare weight, and what the load was. It sounds trivial. It is also the document you'll be digging for in February when the merchant's self-billed invoice doesn't match what you think left the farm, or when two sheds of wheat need to be reconciled against what the combine supposedly cut.

The bridge produces a number. The ticket is what makes that number mean something six months later. This guide covers what a complete ticket looks like, where paper systems fall down, and how to move to digital tickets without adding faff at the busiest time of year.

What a complete ticket records

For a farm load during harvest, a ticket is complete when it answers every question you might ask about that trailer later:

Field	Why it matters
Date and time	Sequencing loads, checking drier throughput, settling "did that load go yesterday or today"
Vehicle / trailer	Which tare applies; who was carting
Gross weight	The loaded reading
Tare weight	The empty reading — fresh, not last week's
Net weight	Gross minus tare; the number everything else is built on
Crop and variety	Wheat isn't wheat when one shed is milling spec and one is feed
Field	This is what turns tickets into field yields
Destination shed / store	This is what turns tickets into shed stock
Moisture (if sampled)	Explains weight loss through the drier later
Driver / operator initials	Someone to ask when a ticket doesn't add up

For loads leaving the farm, add the haulier, the buyer or contract reference, and keep your copy of the collection note with it.

Most disputes trace back to one of two gaps: a stale tare (the trailer was weighed empty in a dry week and has carried half harvest since), or a missing field or shed entry that someone meant to fill in at the end of the day and never did.

Where paper tickets fall down

Paper works — right up until harvest is actually running. Then the familiar failures show up:

• Tickets get filled in from memory. The trailer's tipped and gone, the next one is waiting, and the field name gets written in at eight o'clock that night. Or doesn't.
• The book lives in one place. If the ticket book is in the weighbridge kiosk and the loader driver is filling the lorry at the far shed, that outgoing load is getting recorded on a scrap of fag packet, if at all.
• Nobody adds them up until it's too late. A pile of tickets tells you nothing until someone types them into a spreadsheet. That job lands in the office weeks later, along with the typos.
• One copy exists. Rain, diesel, and lost ticket books do not care that it was the only record of 400 tonnes.

None of this is carelessness — it's what happens when the recording system is slower than the trailers. During the weeks that matter, any step that takes longer than the tip gets skipped.

Going paperless without losing the discipline

Digital tickets fix the mechanical problems: every entry is timestamped, legible, backed up, and added up as it happens. The discipline problems — recording the right field, keeping tares fresh — still need a system. What good looks like:

• Capture at the pad, not the office. The record should be made where the weighing happens, on a phone or tablet, in the seconds the vehicle is on the bridge. If it waits for the office it's a transcription job, not a record.
• Pending loads stay visible. Weigh in, tip, weigh out can be minutes or hours apart. The system should hold the open ticket and nag until the tare closes it — that's how part-recorded loads stop happening.
• Pick from lists, don't type. Crop, field, and shed should be a tap from a short list set up before harvest. Free-text fields are where "Long Acre", "long acre" and "L. Acre" come from, and they'll each get their own line in the spreadsheet.
• Totals update themselves. The point of the exercise is that crop totals, shed stock, and field yields exist the moment the last trailer tips — not after an evening of data entry.

This is the job weighbridge software does, and on farms it's less about replacing the bridge's own indicator software and more about replacing the ticket book and the spreadsheet behind it. Harvestt, for what it's worth, is built around exactly this loop: weigh in, tag crop-field-shed, weigh out, and the dashboard does the arithmetic.

Keep tickets, even digital ones

However tickets are made, keep them. Weight records support your grain assurance (Red Tractor expects traceability from field to store to sale), your VAT records where loads relate to sales, and any claim you ever need to make against a haulier or buyer. Digital records make this easy — a complete, exportable history rather than a drawer of faded thermal paper — but the retention habit matters either way. Six years is the safe default for anything that touches a transaction.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a weighbridge ticket?

A weighbridge ticket is the record of one weighing: date, vehicle, gross and tare weights, net weight, and what the load was. On farms a complete ticket also records crop, field, and destination shed, which is what makes field yields and shed stock possible later.

What should be on a farm weighbridge ticket?

Date and time, vehicle or trailer, gross weight, fresh tare weight, net weight, crop and variety, source field, destination shed, moisture if sampled, and the operator's initials. For outgoing loads, add the haulier and contract reference.

How long should weighbridge tickets be kept?

Keep anything that relates to a sale or assurance for at least six years — that covers VAT and gives comfortable margin over Red Tractor's traceability expectations. Digital tickets make this straightforward since the history doesn't fade or go missing.

Why do gross and tare weights need to be taken close together?

Because tare weights drift. Mud, rain, fuel, and kit left in the trailer all change the empty weight. A tare taken last week can be a few hundred kilos out, and that error lands directly in the net weight of every load recorded against it.